507: Leadership and Accountability at the VA. With Secretary Doug Collins

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins about the realities of leadership in war, ministry, law, Congress, and now the VA. Collins shares hard lessons from funerals and eulogies, where grief and writing become tools for healing. He reflects on the brutality of “full-contact politics,” bipartisan wins that mattered, and the chaos of impeachment battles. From his close work with President Trump to his current mission inside the nation’s second-largest department, Collins lays out the scale of the VA—health care, benefits, cemeteries—and the fight to cut through bureaucracy. This conversation is about service, accountability, and the relentless effort to honor veterans not as victims, but as warriors who deserve the best care their nation can give. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 507 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. A veteran committed suicide by setting himself on fire in front of a New Jersey VA clinic after staff at the clinic repeatedly failed to ensure he received adequate mental health care. An investigation of the death found. Department of Veterans Affairs staff canceled an appointment Charles Ingram had in fall 2015 because a provider was unavailable, didn't follow up to reschedule, and when he walked into the clinic to ask for an appointment, they didn't schedule it until three months later, the VA Inspector General found.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  Ingram, a 51-year-old Gulf War veteran, had been approved to receive treatment at a non-VA facility, but no one at VA contacted him or scheduled an appointment. In March 2016, shortly before his VA appointment, Ingram went into the clinic in Northfield, New Jersey, doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire. The clinic was closed at the time. Staff failed to show up on no-shows, clinic cancellations, termination of services, and non-VA care coordination consults as required, the Inspector General wrote in a report released Wednesday.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  This led to a lack of ordered mental health therapy and necessary medications and may have contributed to his distress. And that right there is from a USA Today article from 2017, and the article goes on to say that after the death, the VA, quote, "allocated more clinical resources to the clinic, removed the hospital director overseeing the facility, and instituted same-day mental health services for urgent cases," end quote. And so, some lessons were learned, but clearly at a devastating cost. And the VA is a massive organization with massive responsibilities, first and foremost,

• 2:06Jocko Willink?

  obviously supporting our veterans. And here's another quote, and this one is from an interview from August 6, 2025, from a YouTube channel called About Face Veterans, and it says this, quote, "I sent the VA an email. They said they would send someone out to give me an assessment, and they came out and they gave me an assessment, and they said I needed inpatient rehab." They told me and they talked to the judge and they got the judge to let me turn my plea of not guilty into treatment in lieu of a conviction. The VA literally saved my life. The only two stops left for me were death and prison. And the VA made sure I had options.

• 2:51Jocko Willink?

  It was just up to me to put in the work. End quote. So when functionally correctly, the VA absolutely saves lives and takes care of our veterans, but it is no easy task. And like any endeavor, leadership is the most important factor in the mission. The mission success or mission failure. And the leader currently in charge of the Department of Veterans Affairs is Secretary Doug Collins. He's been a pastor, a lawyer. Maybe we'll hold that against him. A representative in Georgia's State House and a US Representative for Georgia's Ninth Congressional District. He served in the Navy.

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  He's currently serving as a Colonel in the US Air Force Reserve. In addition to his duties, serving our veterans as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share his experiences and his perspectives and what's happening today in the VA. Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us. It's an honor to have you here.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  It's my honor to be here with you.

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  Now, I know you've been doing a decent amount of podcasts lately, which is awesome. It's awesome that we have some of our people inside of our government that are willing to just go out and do long form podcasts, which it seems like in the past, the government was very scared to do. Sit there and have conversations, people is very threatening. But let's just do a little bit of background for you. It's just a little bit about how you grew up, where you're from, et cetera. Georgia, right?

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yep, Georgia, North Georgia. In fact, I still live there, been all over the world, but North Georgia's home, that's where my bride's at. And we were, been there forever. She's living in DC right now, Switzerland. Kids are there. I grew up in a sort of fairly just middle-class, lower-middle-class home. My dad is a state trooper from Georgia, 31 years. I grew up a trooper's kid, believe me. I fought the law, the law won. Every time. I mean, he's six foot two, two hundred and fifty pounds. I was scrawny, six foot four, hundred and thirty pounds, soaking wet. Uh, yeah, it was, his, his ideal fun was picking me up in high school and, uh, put me in the backseat of the car on, on the patrol car on the way home. So, yeah, it was that. Mom worked with senior adults. And so I grew up there and, uh, just had an inordinate, uh, desire to be empowered in, in leadership, just to go in and being a part of our society, be giving what we've had back.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Um, Lisa and I got married right out of college, for me, right out of college. And, um, at that time, thought I was gonna go on a different path. God led us a different way. I had, uh, went into, uh, was doing some sales, doing some work, and then, uh, answered a call to ministry, uh, pastored for, got a master's, pastored for over eleven years.

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Uh, during that time, I served a little bit in the Navy. Actually came out here, uh, to San Diego was my, uh, my, or COT training, my commissioned officer training.

• 5:26Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  It was about ninety-three, three timeframe, ninety-four timeframe. And, uh, spent the summer, went a little bit of time up at Pendleton, uh, and doing a summer up there. And then spent for a couple of years, but I have a, uh, when we started having kids, my daughter has spinal bifid, my oldest daughter. She's thirty-three, she still lives with us, but she works every day. Um, I wish I had her attitude. And, um, and it, and, uh, so there's some things going on in church going, so I, it was a chance for me to decide I needed it, cause if the Navy wanted me to go full-time. And it just, it was, and I said.

• 5:54Jocko Willink?

  And what, what were you doing in the Navy?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Chap.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  You were a chaplain.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, Chaplain, Chaplain County started that.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  And did you work with the Marine Corps when you were out here?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  That is, so, yeah, as, as most people, you know, really, if you don't know from the outside, the, the Chaplain Corps, Jack Corps, mostly, the Navy is supplying that to the Marine. Uh, and it was, uh, really a great time. So I've had the, really the benefit, if you look at it over time, I've been with Marines, Navy, and Air Force. So, uh, I've have a, you know, broad experience on, in each, uh, side. I got out for a little while, uh, while I was passionate, but in two thousand and two, got back in. I'd been wanting to go back in for about a year and a half, and then two thousand and two made it happen. And I've been there ever since, twenty-four years.

• 6:27Jocko Willink?

  Um, wasn't, I was at September eleventh.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  A little bit. It was, it was something I was missing it. Uh, you know, when you're out, and, and I know most people feel this, I was, I loved being, you know, part of the Navy, and I wanted to back in, but couldn't find a way. And that just heightened it even more. It's going forward to say, hey, I gotta get back in this. And, uh, and during that time was also a transition, um, from the church, been there eleven years, we had a great success at the church, but, um. I've always felt that life is sort of a dirt road, old country dirt road from where I'm at up in the mountains, it's always twisting. And an opportunity opened up and it was just something my wife and I had settled down and she said, something's wrong. And I said, yeah, it is. And I said, we gotta fix it. And crazy enough, you know, it seems it was to go back to what I originally thought I was gonna do back when we first got married and let's go to law school. And so here we are, 38 years old, I got three kids, a wife who teaches school and I go back full time to law school, leave the church.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  My only income was reserve pay that I had once a month when I was at the 94th air wing down at Dobbins and

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  And your wife agreed to all this?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was amazing. She's pretty cool, pretty cool gal.

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  Wait, so how did you get to this point? You know, you've got a good life going, you've got things squared away, you're doing good things, doing the Lord's work. And then one day she recognizes that, hey, something's wrong?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  It had been going on for a little bit. It was one of those things that, you know, it was, again, from a faith perspective, it was just, I was leaving church and we'd have, you know, people come, people join, we'd had a building problem, they're all going well. But by the what time I was about a mile or two down the road, kids in the car, it was just, it was this homesick feeling. It was just like, something's missing. And so one day we're at home, she teaches school and I was at the church and she had to go to a doctor's appointment and I had stayed at the house that day. And she got back and I just said, I said, I remember saying, I said, I'm miserable. And she said, and of course in Lisa format, my little wife is five foot two, little nothing. She looked at me and then she looked straight at me and said, what are you gonna do about it?

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Well, thanks, honey. You know, where's that hug and saying, oh, I know you're there. And it was, what are you gonna do about it? And, and that's when we just sat down and we just had an honest conversation about where we were and what we wanted to do. And we knew something was sort of up. I'd learned a lot. I think here's, I've said this before, and for, for young people listening to this podcast, I don't care where you're at, especially if you're in your college years or others, you think you got the world mapped out. Maybe it's your first couple of years in the military, you got your, you know, your path to general is already there. Yeah, right. Look at it. But don't be afraid to realize there's seasons in life and sometimes you're not ready. And for me, if I'd become a lawyer, I believe back in the late eighties, when I thought I was going to, I believe in fullness, I would have probably been divorced.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Uh, cause sometimes ambition gets the better of you. You look beyond what you can do and handle. God knew that. And so he spent, I spent years in ministry, working with senior adults and dealing with death and dealing with a lot of issues, having children. So when I started back that it opened the door. The interesting thing is for about a year and a half, I've been really feeling miserable. The minute we she and I had that conversation and we decided that that was the path that I was going to leave the church and if I got accepted, it was relief.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Cause I knew it was the right thing to do.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's one of the reasons I wanted to ask you that question because I, I hear from a lot of people, I've talked to a lot of people, a lot of people ask me questions and that's a question that I get people, I guess it's similar to, you know, what people would call the midlife crisis. I guess you weren't quite to midlife yet, but you were getting close. And sometimes when people get to their midlife crisis, they do really dumb things.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:44Jocko Willink?

  Like they don't share the fact that they're having some thoughts in their head with, you know, their spouse, which if you don't do that, now you end up making a move without your spouse and you end up with real problems.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:53Jocko Willink?

  So it's just a good way to face that, the reality of what you're, what you're feeling and where you're at and where you want to be and doing something about it, like your wife said.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Well, it is. And it was at motion. Yeah. I, you know, doing, you know, chaplaincy and being in the military and also in the civilian world, the one of the things I used to tell couples when they got together and if somebody's listening today and, you know, some, look, everybody struggles. Everybody has issues. Everybody, there's not all, you know, great days and you wake up in a new way. But I've always told them and I stick to this, it's not how you make love, it's how you make war. And it's how you handle the difficulties. Everybody can do the other part, but it's how you handle the conversations and honest conversations between you and your spouse or you and your partner, whatever it may be. If you don't have those honest conversations and, and there's a relationship there that breeds that, then you're really two separate people living in the same place. And when she was back and she's backed me completely and everything, but we went into

• 10:45Speaker 01

  law school. I remember making my sandwiches. I'd go down and get on the bus. I mean, we, we cut back everything. About a year, my first year of law school, a state house seat that I'd, I'd always dabbled in politics is another issue. I'd always been around it and it was something I was very much interested in. It came open. And so I went to this meeting one morning and I heard that this, they weren't going to be running. So I said, okay, I'll solve this. You know, the little bug gets inside of you. And I said, I'm gonna call Lisa on the way home and then, I said, Lisa, this is 2006. I said, hey, you know, this state's not going to be running and, you know, there's going to be the seat open in North Hall. And again, here she goes again. She says, well, it might be your time. So first year of law school, I run for office, public office, state house in Georgia.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Um, and from there it just sort of, uh, it took on, I passed that, uh, finished bar, my, uh, law school in three years. Graduated in May, took the bar in July, deployed to Iraq in August. Found out I passed the bar on, on Halloween in Balad and, uh, came back, started law practice. Few years later, got elected to Congress.

• 11:47Jocko Willink?

  What? So let's go, let's just pause a little bit at, um, you're, so now you're in the air force.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:52Jocko Willink?

  And so you finish law school, let me get this right, you finish law school, you take the bar and then you go on deployment. And again, now you're going on deployment, you go to the Balad and you're a chaplain.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:04Jocko Willink?

  But, and you're, but you're air force, but you're in Balad and Balad is like the big airbase in Iraq.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  Uh, what, what was your, what was your mission there?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  It was chaplain. I was nighttime flight line chaplain. So it was great. Uh, for me, I, it was one of those things where I was, you know, put it at a time that was just after the surge, you know, just we're drawing down, there was still a lot of action. Balad became this sort of the center point for all, uh, especially my, my mascals, others coming out of the, the car. If you remember back in that summer, uh, right before I got there, about probably about four weeks before I got there, there was the.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, eight or oh seven?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Oh, eight. Oh, wait, there was the bomb that blew up and, uh, I think it was Mosul, it was north of us. And it was the, uh, like one of the mayors and all of them, they were at a town meeting and they, a suicide bomber blew up. Um, I get to, it's just sort of, I remember seeing that on the, when I get to Balad, many of those were there in our hospital. Uh, and so it was just like, you brought it all around, a very stark reality. So at night I would go out and I had free, basically I ran, you know, all around the flight lines, went over the army side, went over special ops. We had, um, I was there chaplain, uh, when we went over, uh, went out with the other folks on, in our security forces. One of the first times that air force was actually taking over perimeter duty since Vietnam, uh, in that time.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  So it was a really a challenge and they, I would go out and get with them and I'd go out in this, the Overwatch towers. And they loved it because they would get to, uh, practice, they would get to fire if I was coming out because they could say, oh, well, the chaplain's here. We're going to fire, we're going, we're going to do live fire. Uh, so they, uh, the, one of the gates had said, it gave me my calls. It was White Reaper.

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  White Reaper?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  White Reaper.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  So you could hear him on the radio, White Reapers here, White Reapers here, get up. So it was.

• 13:47Jocko Willink?

  That's an interesting call sign for the chaplain.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool too, but you know, it was, uh, it was there, but, uh, but so it was, it was something I, it let me go into everything chaplains, uh, I could have went after graduate special law school, I could have already started transition if I wanted to, to go to the JAG Corps, had no desire to. I was where I believed I was supposed to be. And so I would get to go and, and go into the talk, go into the, uh, the other places and, and just be there and, and talk, go into the control tower at night when the planes are coming. And it gave me a chance to get into their life, understand what they were doing, but also talk. There was so many stories. Uh, I had, you know, several groups that came in and I watched, uh, you know, units come in. Um, I, I remember, and it just instilled in me that this country is still, you know, blessed with some of the greatest young people in the world, uh, coming forward.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I had a young lady who had, was late for the deployment and I had been going around to this and I saw her and I didn't recognize her and I, uh, cause I was at those gates every night. And so I asked her, I said, why are you, why are you, I hadn't seen you, I said, where you been? She said, well, I just got here. I said, well, why'd you just get here? I said, well, you know, your unit's been here about a month, month and a half. She said, uh, I just had a baby. And she had a six month old. And so she had worked up, I said, and I asked her, and my first thought was, you know, here I'm, I'm a dad, I got three. I said, why don't you just defer to the next deployment? I said, you know, they're, she said, this is my unit. They said, I, I, I was supposed to come with them. And so here was an interesting thing, here in the middle of the night, uh, I would go by and see her about two to three times a week and she would show me pictures and videos.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  So I actually watched her little one, you know, even I think caught even a first sort of step one night and you know, here we are both in tears in the middle of the, the desert. But it just, but she was there wanting to do her job. And so it was, it was, I enjoyed it. We got, I did travel a little bit in the country. Um, and, but it just for, for me now, it also just deepens my, uh, understanding what we do at the VA. But it was a massive base. Uh, the hospital out there is pretty amazing, um, and what we did. If you came under, there was the, uh, discussion of many people have this vision of the flag that is coming, uh, it's called the hero's highway was what it was. It's coming from the helicopters into the hospital and they, they said, if you came in under that flag.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Alive, you were breathing, you were alive, that you was, we had a 98% survival rate to get you to the next stop. And Jock, I was, there was many nights that I was there, we had units that were messed up. And, um, and I was with a lot of them and there was one time, and I still got the paper, the stars and stripes, so they used to, if you remember, they used to put the pictures of deceased in there and they, you know, if there's a lot, there's some, there's some weeks it wasn't me. And I remember one week, um, I picked up the paper, I was at the DFAC and picked up the paper and looked in it, opened it up, and there were five faces that I knew. That I had either been by their bedside, knew where they were, um, one who was, I still see his face, blonde hair, blue eye. And, um, he was struggling.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  And his unit, some of his other guys in the unit got, uh, his IED attack. And, uh, all they wanted to do was know how he was. And he got back, uh, we was alive, uh, but my understanding is he made it back to the States and my understanding is at least when what we thought was his family got to be with him. But, um, you know, those are the kind of things that, that you see, and it's infected me, uh, and it affected how we operate, but it was also the chaplains, I mean, there's sometimes, uh, you know, there's always this belief, well, the chaplains either throwing the Bible at you or come to service. The chaplain has a unique role in our, our military. Um, and it's there, uh, to give you a place to go to talk, to that confidential communication,

• 17:29Speaker 01

  to talk, to, to, to get you through and be prepared. I always said that I was part of readiness, that my job was to keep you ready. I remember, I remember one guy, I got called early one morning, I'm supposed to get off at seven o'clock, uh, that morning, I get a call at 6:45, I say, hey chap, you need to come by the security. I said, okay, what's up? And they said, we got a guy here that, uh, we don't know what to do with. And I said, okay, so I went over. Um, and this is still just, I don't know, you've seen it before as well. We get there and this guy, I said, okay, what's wrong? And he comes out to me, he just landed in country, made it to the phone, calling home, and his wife says she wants a divorce. Just made it into country. I mean,

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I don't understand that thought. I do not understand hating, but in my mind, somebody that bad, that they're getting ready to go out and you're sending this in, this is infantry and army. And so I talked with him for several hours because he was distraught. We finally, I think we just got to the point where we had to send him home. I mean, he was just, it was just not fair. And so that's a readiness issue. And if your mind's not ready, I always told people, and there's a lot of people I had to talk about, and sort of sometimes derisively so the reserves and the weekend warriors and stuff. Frankly, if you look at our DOD setup now, our D O W now, Department of War.

• 18:43Jocko Willink?

  Correct yourself, Mr. Secretary.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Director of War, yeah, people get up, people get up there and the boss will say something. So, but no, the Department of War is, they're so integrated that it's just, it's just not even, you know, look, and, but I used to do, when I do the newcomers brief, I'd say, look, you're coming in. I said, here's what's going to happen. You're going to leave on Friday night. You're going to be here for Saturday. And I said, the minute you walk out, you get out the door and you get on base, the kids are going to get sick, the dog is going to run away, the car is not going to crank, and it's all going to happen on the weekend. You're supposed to be here. I said, so just get ready. It's going to happen. And, you know, and you walk them through that. So, BLOD was an interesting experience. You know, of course, we were, you know, Mortarita Ville was the, sort of the moniker nickname of BLOD. I knew I had survived. Somebody was laughing about this the other day. You knew

• 19:30Speaker 01

  you were, had made it, you know, to that certain point of being in country, when about the first two or three days, you know, the siren would go off and you start looking, okay, where do I need to go? After about three or four days, like, you know, whatever. Whatever. They're going to give me, they're going to give me. I'll never forget, last night I was there, I'm packing, you know, getting stuff together. I'm on, I got my bill, I got my ticket, I'm getting on that C-130 tomorrow. I'm ready to go.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  How long was your deployment over there?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Uh, from end of August to about the end of January, timeframe. So, I covered, I covered all the football season, all, you know, but that actually made us a great connection point with, with troops, because I go out and be with them. But I got there and that night, the course of the siren, of course, goes off and I didn't think anything about it because we're in those big, you know, cement areas. And this one, right. I mean, it was like, wow. It was, I mean, it was like blowing up stuff. And it was, what we've come to find out is about 60, 70 yards on the other side, near the flight line, where we're at in G. And then, and then I'm saying, well, okay, that was pretty close.

• 20:25Jocko Willink?

  That'll get your blood flowing.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, and then about, not three minutes later, I mean, even closer on the other side, it's like. Really? Okay, if you're gonna get me now, you're gonna get me. I just packed more. I just went at it. I said, I'm getting out of here. But, uh, but you just get to see a cross-country, uh, section of country of our life and our people. And, and from a chaplain perspective, um, sometimes just people need to talk. I'll, I'll tell you, one of the interesting cases I saw one night, I was at the late night, that was my supper and I was in there. Just sitting around talking and, and went and sat down and all of a sudden I see this, uh, guy walking toward me had army PTO. And they came up and he said, uh, he said, hey, and he said, you're a chaplain, aren't you? I said, yeah. And he said, he's, oh, let's go. He said, well, I'm an army chaplain.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  And, but at some point you just said, something wasn't right. And he sat down and we began to talk and he had not been home. He'd only been home, let's rephrase this way, he had been home like eight months in almost three years. He was fried. I mean, God love him. He tried. And, um, he, he just, we just sat there and talked for almost two hours. I put him in, I had a vehicle and I wa- I took him back to his, uh, parrot, his hooch and said, you know, look, and the next morning, you know, I tried to get, you know, I did and we, hopefully I think he got out. Uh, I went and told his folks, he said, he's gone. You know, he's, he's, he's not good, you know, for himself. He's not good for us.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Because he was just, I mean, uh, the three years, I mean, he was, you know, and then getting to go home just enough to get

• 21:57Speaker 01

  eh, bad. And, and this is the thing that everybody forgets these days. War is so different. Our deployments are so different. You know, eh, the cell phone, the sat phone, the zoom, you know? Lisa and I had a, a, a, a deal. We did no video calls while I was in Iraq. We just couldn't handle it. Uh, I couldn't be there, but I could talk. So we called and we had our phone time and we'd do that. And I taught the kids if the kids wanted to talk. They were younger then. Um, but I, I watched, you know, some of these folks that they were trying to still live two lives. They were, and, and you can't do that. And it's terrible.

• 22:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, my, my wife called me, I was in Iraq, uh, two thousand and six, and my wife, you know, sends me a, a message and says, hey, the kids want to see where you're sleeping. You know, my kids were like, you know, probably three, four, three, five, something like that, young, young kids. And hey, can you send a picture of where you're sleeping at night? And I was sleeping, you know, in a little bed that was made out of plywood or whatever. And before I took the picture, I opened up a bag and pulled out a folder and took pictures of my family out and hung up the pictures.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:04Jocko Willink?

  Around my bed, took the picture of where I slept and then took the pictures back down, put them back in the folder and put them away because I just, same thing, I just couldn't, I didn't want to be thinking about, I mean, look, obviously I love my family, but I didn't want to be thinking about my family when I've got to be thinking about the troops and my guys and the mission. And I just, you know, just didn't want to do it. My, my wife and I were the same way. We would talk like, you know, probably once a week on the phone for 10 minutes and she'd tell me that the water heater broke and, you know, whatever, but she, you know, just, just, she was going to handle it.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:37Jocko Willink?

  And so I think that does make it very, very difficult. And the other, the other thing is, is, you know, and I think this is bad for the military, but these, the way we do deployments now, like in World War II, you were going.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Daughter, daughter come home.

• 23:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  I get it.

• 23:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And that's, that's just the way it is. And when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, whatever that is, whether it's a year, whether it's, you know, six months, whatever it's going to be, you know, if you can get to there, you're going to, you can go home.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that does not seem like a great way to win wars. And by the way, we haven't won, won any wars with that, uh, particular procedure.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Well, think about it in Vietnam.

• 24:11Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  The Canada three sixty five.

• 24:13Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  You know, it became the whole thing. And, and how many, you know, got to that last 30, you know, or they, you know, it came up and it's, it's just an issue. And, um, it's tough. And, and when you talk about this, it's not just, you know, deployments we've had and everything else. This translates into the very issues that we're seeing in my current job. This, this translates directly into, you know, how people are affected by that. I mean, you go, you come home, it's, it's almost like you're living, you know, these dual lives. And, and now you even get into it today when you have the quote, remote control wars, you have the drones, you have, uh, you know, the, uh, stuff that we use, uh, all the time, the, uh, you know, unmanned aircraft, those kinds of things like that. But there's still people behind those.

• 24:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. I got a friend that. Back stateside, killed a bunch of, you know, enemy fighters on a daily basis, and he'd go home for dinner.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:04Jocko Willink?

  And see his kids and, you know, take his kids to the dance recital. And then the next day, he's out killing people again. Yeah, that's a different situation, but you know, what has that done to, what does that do to the human mind?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Well, it does. And we're seeing some of the, and that was when, you know, there's been some, a lot of discussion on the issues of, of that with, you know, you say, well, you, you never left X place. But, you know, we're seeing PTS, we're seeing that kind of thing because, you know, sometimes they're, you know, you look at us, they're doing this long-term. This has become, you know, sort of an invested kind of, you know, mission, if you would, you know, to be very generic. But it's, it's something that they do and they have to do it every day and then they have to cut, cut that switch on and off. Um, and I think that's a different.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  It's not something we've gotten to really good handle on how do you handle that? Um, one of the areas that we're doing is we also have some of our shorter timeframes now. You know, we're doing everything we can to, oh, we'll get you in for four years, we'll get you in for three, you know, six years, you know? And the reality is, all of our studies are showing today that the, and this is just an interesting look, that the shorter the in-service time, so the shorter, like the, the four-year stand, the six-year stand, even, you know, a lot shorter, are our most at risk later in life. It's not the 20, it's not those of us who've been in 24 years and, and it shows that especially in the last 25 years, uh, have, have come in.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Um, it's still amazes me too, John, how many people think that right now that we're just quasi peace kind of stuff? And, you know, we don't have anybody anywhere, you know, we got people all over the place and you can just publicly look at the paper and look at that. But it's still going on. This op tempo is high. And when they're in for three or four years in this high adrenaline, high, uh, impact environment, and then they go back out into the world. And the world is not high adrenaline, the high, the world is not high impact, you don't have your buddies beside you, you're not have a common mission. You know, you gotta make choices again.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  We've not had a chance to sort of what I call, you know, we break, build, but not mend. And so I think that's going to be the thing that we're having to really seriously look at. But and it's not just frankly, the newer veteran, that statistic holds through all the way to Vietnam. And and people who have unfortunately, you know, chose death by suicide, even in their 50s, 60s and older. There's this that that percentage, that very high percentage had shorter term enlistments. And shorter term service. So there's got to be something there, you know, that you got to look at. It may not be the this, you know, one plus one equals the two kind of like, but there's a, there's a one and a half in there somewhere.

• 27:37Jocko Willink?

  Put it in the calculus.

• 27:39Jocko Willink?

  Now, you're, you're over in Balad and clearly a lot of casualties are coming through there. And although most of them live, I mean, a lot of those guys, they might live, but they're going to be, they got serious.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Issues.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  Major wounds, physical wounds, mental wounds, the whole nine yards. And of course, not all of them make it. You just mentioned that the stars and stripes for five guys on the, on the paper there. As you, you know, this was 2008 that you're there. We'd already been in Iraq for five years. What do you, as you weigh out, you got to see what this costs. And as you weigh that out and as you look at what's, what's going on in the world right now. It seems like we need to raise the bar quite a bit in terms of when we go to war.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  I think so. I think what's disturbed me more as we go past this is what's happened. In the end results, the out years. Okay. And it's sort of it's. A good movie, a good book, good song always ends in, in, in a way that hooks you. I guess is the best way I can describe this, or it ends in a way that's fitting to the, to the cause. And an end that doesn't fit sort of that whole area of how we're doing it. And I think that's the part that has become so disturbing for many of us.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  If I'm not mistaken, and, and, you know, it's a lot of, you know, time gone past, but it was less than two and a half years after I left that we shut down the lot and turned it back over.

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  Pulled out, yeah. Just, I think it was 2010, 2011.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  2011, 2011. And I thought about that to myself. I'm saying, about how much of our precious life was there? And all of a sudden, you know, we're gone and we see what happened within a matter of years.

• 29:19Jocko Willink?

  And I just got asked this the other day. Anyone that had been in Iraq knew that when we left, if we left completely, it was just a matter of time. And anyone that had served in Afghanistan, I didn't serve in Afghanistan, but everyone that I knew that served in Afghanistan, said, oh, if we pull out of there, it's going to get overrun by the Taliban very quickly. Everyone thought that except for, I guess, the official intelligence reports coming from the Pentagon, which said, no, no, the, you know, the forces are ready and the Taliban doesn't stand a chance. And they said, well, they might do something. Oh, it's going to take them seven days. Oh, actually, they'll be there in three. Yeah, it's game over.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, by the time we acknowledged it was over. So I think that's, that's the part for me that, yes, it raises the bar on where we should be and how we should be. It also goes, you know, frankly, from a perspective, and I'm, you know, not in that chain of command, but, but looking at it from someone who serves, is this idea, you do it or don't? You do it or don't? And this idea of this, you know, the idea that if we're going to commit, then, then by God, you commit. And you, you don't, you know, wonder, well, we're going to commit partially here and then we'll see what we can do. You're going to be in trouble there.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's some, some level of arrogance. If you're a military leader and you think you can go into another country, and number one, you think you can do a clean job of just taking out the enemy and not causing collateral damage, not destroying a bunch of infrastructure, not killing innocent civilians. If you think you can do that, you're wrong. And then if you think you can go to another country and fight and you're not going to take any casualties yourself. And finally, if you think that whatever your plan is that you came up with, sitting back in your office in the Pentagon, and you think that's going to go that way, you're wrong on all counts. And so if you're not seriously considering the worst possible outcome, you know, it's like you said, with the National Guard, a guy's going to go, you know, for his weekend away, everything's going to go wrong. That has to be your attitude when you're looking to go into war, that everything you think's

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  going to happen is, everything good that you think's going to happen is not going to go that way. So you come back, how's your transition come back to America? When you come back from.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  I haven't really thought about it in these terms because that's one of the real issues we're dealing with right now. Um, for me, I just, uh, it was suck it up and go. I came back, um, I had got my law degree now. I wanted to start a law practice. I was in the, uh, I was just getting sworn into my second. By the way, I got reelected to the office while I was in Iraq.

• 31:28Jocko Willink?

  How was, how was the political thing? Like when you entered the political, did the people come and like, did start digging all the dirt and throwing mud at you and the whole nine yards?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, not early on. Early on was not as bad because you're in a local kind of state house kind of stuff. You mean, it's, it's in North Georgia. I'm, I'm, like I said, I was born and raised. My dad, you know, I knew a lot of folks is in a sort of my backyard, if you would, where I live, still live to this day. Um, except when I'm trapped in DC. I just leave it that. That one has become the hard one for Lisa and I, uh, we're not sure if we're newlyweds or we're, uh, empty nesters or what. But, you know, we go from our house in Georgia, which we live in, you know, in the lake where I grew up, uh, in that area. And now we go to a little condo in DC in which we, we rarely get to go out or anything else. It's like, this is a whole different era. So, uh, but coming back, um, I'm the cas, I'm the classic case of what shouldn't do.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  I came in, went to, uh, within 48 hours, Lisa picked me up at the, uh, airport. Uh, I went, we picked up the kids. We had a special time with the kids. Well, she and I spent the night in Atlanta, then I picked up the kids the next day. Um, the, I think it was either the day after or the next day I went down to the Capitol, got sworn in for the session that had just started. Um, began putting my paperwork, got my bar, uh, swearing in, got all this done in that first few weeks, start, tried to start a practice. Uh, we went right into our session, did everything, never once reflecting, you know, hey, maybe I need to take a few minutes here and, um.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  You know, then you're in public life and then it, it, it, what you, I think people today, and I'm encouraging, you know, folks listening today, maybe you, maybe you did this as well. Maybe you sort of half rear ended the, the transition. You, you didn't either from a deployment or even actually getting out. It's, it's not too late to go back and sort of fix some of that. You're never gonna put, it's gonna be scarred. So it's not ever gonna be like it should have been, but you can at least go back and start. And for me, it was never really acknowledging it that it had been stressful, that it had been a problem. And it could say, let me take it back a step further. When I was pastoring, I had volunteered as a chaplain for the police and fire. So my job, a lot of times the police, fires,

• 33:43Speaker 01

  not only to ride with them during that time, but also I was the death notification person. I was the one that had, you know, when it went bad, I was the one that was in the middle. I mean, I've had people yell at me. I've had people tell me I'm lying. I've had people tell me that I'm wrong. I've had people hit me. I've had people, you know, you know, run away out of the room. And it all gets to you.

• 34:02Jocko Willink?

  Would you do notification for like victims of car crashes and stuff like, oh gosh?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I had one one time and it was a, actually an educator in my home county. I got called that night. Young guy died, never came home from school. He was a school administrator. Never came home and they had to go tell the wife. She was calling. The phone on his desk was calling. It was her. We couldn't talk to her. So I had to go, we went to the house. He went to the house. He had three little kids and toys everywhere. And it's just, you know, you try what you do is just like as a leader in the middle, you just eat it and you move on, eat it, move on. That's not, that's not a good thing. You know, over time you'll beat it up. So.

• 34:42Jocko Willink?

  What's your, what's your protocol for a situation like that?

• 34:45Speaker 01

  For what we'd had then is you would go up and one of the things that you learn early on is there's no sugar coating what has happened. I, I've had so many times, I've had to train chaplain, because the good part of it is I came back as a chaplain, a little bit older. I had a lot of pretty, a good bit of experience. I had like seven years, you know, senior pastor experience. So when I came back in, and especially the younger chaplain, I'd say, you know, they do this. Well, you know, you go in and you say, well, we're sorry to say, but you know, your, your loved one's no longer here. What do you mean they're not here? You know, so, you know, or, or they have went on. Well, what does that mean? And so really your protocol is to come in and you acknowledge who you are, you know, tell them who you are.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Um, and then this is why frankly, this is one area that again, for all our military folks out there, I'm just saying a preference is that I'm not building doctrine here. Um, we put that on the officer. We put that on the, uh, line side, so to speak, and we have the chaplain there sort of support. Frankly, it should be reversed in my mind because these, I mean, I, I can't tell you how many times I've been in the car with an officer, you know, that they had to go, they didn't want to do this. They're looking at me terrified.

• 35:54Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. They've never done it before.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  And they've never done it before because you're not, I mean, how many times are you trained for this? You don't train for that. And, and frankly, sometimes a lot of us didn't either. So you get in and you, you know, look across the person and say, you know, Jock, I'm here tonight because, uh, and I'll try to call them by their name, uh, was killed tonight in a car wreck. Or they were killed and off, yeah. And, and at that moment, you've pulled the pin, so to speak, and you've got to be ready for anything. And at that moment, I've had them just simply collapse. I've had them, like I said, get mad, they run, they did. And then you just, you talk with them for a little bit, um, as best you can. And you try to hit them where they are and some of them, you know, it's just, you know, how could this happen? They want to know and any, but you know, sometimes it's just, you know, this is where we go.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  One of the things that I've learned over time to try and deal with it and people, because the obvious answer to the question that is why? Why did this happen? Why, why, why? And I tell them, you're asking the wrong question. Why, although you want to know why, and I get it, why is not the right question. What, what is the right question? What now? It's not why. You may not ever get that answer. Well, why didn't I, did I, why didn't I go with them? You know, again, you know, what, what do I do now to take what I have and move on? And so back to your question, when I transitioned, you know, out from the deployment, I never took, you know, really that time because I didn't think I had to. I mean, chaplain, you gotta go do this stuff. And so it really, I tell you, over time, you know, built up and then you go into, you're talking about the national politics.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  So when you hit Congress, when I ran for Congress in 12, which was just a few years later, that's the NFL. You know, the lights are on, everybody looks at you, you hear it all, even in a district like mine, which was very safely conservative, um, you still get it. And then when you get to DC, the lights are on. And so it's always this constant tension.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  And really, it started hitting me and I started noticing later, the buildup was when I was in Congress, I became the ranking member of Judiciary Committee in 2018.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  At the end of that, at the end of 2018, end of 2019, the Congress, that was the Congress that first impeached the President, had the Mueller hearing. So I was the lead person on Judiciary, which was all this was on. We had the massive hearings and I was sitting next to Nadler. And it's just this constant trembling. I started noticing that you start eating more and more. So the reason I tell you that whole story is, is I wish I had taken a month, which I could have, and just said, "Hey, you know, I'm just gonna rest here with the family. I'm gonna think about it. I'll go talk to somebody," you know, just say, "Hey." Wasn't terrible. I wasn't injured per se, you know, mentally is a different issue, but you know, they get it. And instead, I let that scab over, let it become a callus, still there.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  And over time, those calluses get removed a little bit, as most would know in this. So I would encourage everyone, use their time in transition, find, you know, even if you don't think so. I found, I don't know, from your perspective, did you ever find stuff coming back that it was little things? It was not the big things? I mean, our house, our house could fall down and be burnt outside. I'm calm as a cucumber. I start watching something on TV, or a song come on, and all of a sudden, I'm in tears.

• 39:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, certainly, you know, like hearing the National Anthem can make me, you know, make me tear up for sure. And yeah, there's, there's like little, little things, little reminder of your, of my friends, you know, that, that I lost, that can definitely catch you off guard. And, you know, I was trying to explain to people that, you know, in, one thing that makes losing someone so difficult is when you're an adult, you're supposed to have control over your emotions. And there's gonna be some emotions that come your way that you're not gonna be able to control. And that's very scary, because if you can't control it, then you think, "Well, then I've lost control of my life. I've lost control of my emotions. I don't know what, you know, what's gonna happen." And what I tell them, which I've found to be true, Is those emotions are going to dissipate over time and and they're going to become less

• 39:54Jocko Willink?

  frequent and less strong. So and then people run into the problem where they think that because their emotions are less strong and because they're less frequent, then they're a bad person because they're, you know, moving on when they're not a bad person. Oh, you're just processing what happened. And that's what you're supposed to do as a human being. And that's, that's, that's the way life goes. And by the way, people have been dealing with loss forever. And there's not one single person on this planet that hasn't had to deal with loss. And, and that's the process that people go through. And one of the things I think that hurts America is we don't, we've got such a diverse culture in America that we don't have a protocol, a, a, a set protocol to deal with loss. You know, if you look at

• 40:37Jocko Willink?

  other cultures, they got their little protocol that you do. It's like, oh, you're going to go to this ceremony, you're going to do this thing, you're going to say this thing, and then that, that mourning period's over and then you're going to move on. But in America, you know, it's kind of wishy washy, which depends on what religion you are, depends on what your parents did, depends on what their parents did. And by the way, you've got two sides of the family and they have different traditions. So you end up just going, well, I know I'm supposed to be sad. Yeah. And I feel sad. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be sad. And, and that's not, that's not a protocol, right? That's just washing around in the, in the tide. And so I think that causes problems too. And I think it's good to have, you know, uh, we do an okay job in the military from like a ceremonial side. But we don't explain that, hey, that ceremony is taking place for a reason. There's a reason that you're doing

• 41:22Jocko Willink?

  these things. I mean, even the, the, the act of burying someone is, you know, if you think about that metaphorically, it's like, okay, like you're burying them, you're putting them back into the earth. And like, that's a, if you think about that from a metaphorical perspective, you go, okay, okay, they're still there, but I have to move on from it. So those are some of the things I think help out. So to answer your question, yes, do, do some small things, you know, make me feel sad? Yeah. And I've had this conversation with many veterans. That's totally normal. Yeah. Like, if you think that you're not going to think about your friends that you lost, that you were your brothers, and you're not going to be sad. And, you know, I had a guy on my podcast, Colonel Tom Fife, who he was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He got

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  a Purple Heart in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And it was very reassuring to me because we were talking about his career, we were talking about his life, we go all the way through World War II, we go all the way through Korea. We we get to Vietnam, we're talking about Vietnam, and he was a battalion commander of Vietnam. He'd started off as a private in the army. Now he's a battalion commander of Vietnam. And I asked him the que- you know, I said, you know, we were talking about what operations they were doing, what the op tempo was like and what their mission was. And finally, you know, just all good, all good conversation. And then I say, well, how many casualties do you, you know, did you take in your battalion? And I asked him that question, he got choked up. And I realized at that moment, I said, oh, this guy, the Vietnam War was whatever it was 60 years ago.

• 42:47Jocko Willink?

  And this man who's lived through World War II, who lived through Korea and lived through Vietnam, he gets choked up when he thinks about the guys he's lost. So it's totally normal that I'm a normal person. And when I talk about my friends, sometimes I'm going to get choked up. And I've explained that story to a lot of veterans. There's, there's nothing wrong, there's absolutely nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, that is normal.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would be concerned on the other side.

• 43:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you, if you so blocked it out that you don't deal with it, um, that's the bigger concern for me. Because at some point, it's, it's like this, uh, probably about the best of like analogy. It's like that dormant volcano. I mean, it doesn't mean that there's not lava there. It doesn't mean that there's not something in there. It just means that for whatever reason, it's not risen to the point where it, it blows. And a lot of that is, is that self-made, uh, stuff that we go that, oh, I can't think about that. Or when I do, um, you know, when I do, I've got to act this way. No, that I say this, and I was just at a funeral the other day. I spoke actually at a funeral, um, and I make this comment at funerals a lot. And I say this, I said, that the reason, I mean, for many of you, I just, I'm going to say something that's going to make you think that I'm crazy.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  I said, but I'm not, I said, the reason you're here is not because somebody died. And most time at a funeral, they're sort of like, well, there's a casket here. I said, the reason you're here is because they lived. I said, how many, how many times do you drive by churches or funeral homes every day? And you see a funeral going on, but you don't stop? It's not a culture that we just, oh, they died, so I gotta go in. No, you, you're there because they lived. And I said, that's what you gotta hold on to. This is the part that you, you gotta get into. The reason that there, that you took time out of your day to go out of a normal routine is because this person lived. And when we focus on that living and then dying is a part of that living, then you're able to try and put those pieces together. And, you know, again, too many times, we, I mean, I've got friends who, I don't go to the funeral, I don't

• 44:39Speaker 01

  go to the hospital. I'm, I'm, you know, I don't, why the hell not? You know, I mean, it's part of life. I mean, really?

• 44:47Jocko Willink?

  Maybe if I don't go to funerals, I'm not gonna die.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. You'd be surprised. I've actually had somebody tell me that. Well, if I go to a funeral, I don't worry about dying. Well, good luck, it's gonna catch you one day, you know?

• 44:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's really, that's another thing I tell people all the time is I, like you, have done a decent amount of eulogies. And so, when someone dies and you then are forced to, in a state of despair, sit down and write out your emotions and your feelings and your thoughts, that is a very therapeutic thing in my, which I didn't think about that, you know, the first time I ever did it. By the time I'm doing it for the third, fourth, fifth time, it's like, oh, okay. And then I see other people going through loss, and I, that's what I tell them. I'm like, hey, write, you know, write that person a letter. You know, it doesn't matter if you ever deliver it at, at, at the church, but write that person a letter. Tell them what you thought about them. Tell them what you're gonna miss about them. Tell them, tell them where, what you're gonna do now that they're gone, and how you're gonna carry on without them, and how you're gonna make them proud.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Yep. You know, the people think that chaplains and pastors, you know, we do this all the time, so it's, you know, you can just do it. And I had a gentleman talking about this, it's not military, but it was in my, my pastor, and he was a Vietnam vet. He was, uh, come by, he came in and, but, uh, was one of my deacons. And I saw him that morning at, uh, church, and we talked about, we were having this issue, that we're trying to get some stuff done, and he was an old cop. He came back, he became a, a cop in Atlanta, David was his name. And, um, so he, and he treated me not like a pastor with that kid glove kind of pastor. It was just, I was just one of the, a guy. He just, I was a, I was a little brother, he didn't really care. He'd tell me if I was getting my head out of my rear.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  And, uh, and I saw him that day, we had kids in the car, and, and I'll never forget, last time I said to him, all right, I'll see you tonight.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  That afternoon, he went home. He was in the backyard doing some stuff, I think with the grass and he fell over dead. Had a hard day. Went to the hospital.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Still remember walking. I've done that hundreds of times, but that one was just, it was just different. And it was about the time of this transition I was discussing. And I went in and I remember leaving, I did my thing, you know, be there as a family, have prayer to, and I remember just walking out of the doorway with some others and I just started walking and I had one of my gentlemen who was a little bit older than me, he followed me out and I was just walking and I was walking out of the hospital and he said, where are you going? I said, I don't know and I don't care. I said, I'm done. I was, I just got to the point where I was tired. And here was somebody that I had depended on, that had, it helped me and it was gone. I was mad at God. I was mad at the world and it was just, it was just

• 47:25Speaker 01

  a struggle. But to the, I went through the motions of, you know, doing the stuff with the family, getting ready for the funeral, which was gonna be in, I think, two days after, whatever, three days after. It's gonna be at the church. I remember going in the office and my secretary Mary, who was like a mom, and I said, I don't want to do this. And she said, well, I understand, but you know, we love David, but you gotta do this. And so I don't, I don't want to, I'm mad. And, and she sort of just walked me through it. It's only she could. And I remember sitting in that room in her little office up from mine and I'm sitting there and

• 48:10Speaker 01

  there's a passage in the scripture where Jonah was, if you remember the biblical story, there's Jonah and the well, we all talk about it. Well, most people don't realize it. The reason he got in the well is because he didn't do What God had wanted him to do. So that's how he ended up there. And then he went and did it. And, and I'm doing my North Georgia, you know, paraphrase here. He, he went and did it. And then he saw that it did exactly what God said, and he got ticked about it. Cause he didn't like the people he was supposed to go see anyway. So he's sitting under the shade tree, sad bush, or whatever you don't call it. And it, and he starts complaining, well, God takes away the shade tree. And it's like, what have you abandoned me here for? And he's, and, and God made a, in the scripture, scripture says that God told him,

• 48:51Speaker 01

  said, look, he said, what do you got me? He said, I gave you this. I gave you the shade. You're complaining about something you didn't have anything to do with it. And I remember sitting there, she's talking, this is the weirdest thing. She's talking to me. And I'm here, that, that just came into my head. And it was basically like saying, get over yourself. I gave him to you to help you through a time. It's now time to do what you need to do. I tried to then go back and it, I just sort of calmed. I walked back to my office. And I started thinking about what I was going to say. Never could. And so the morning of the funeral, I got up and I wrote him a letter. And when it got time for me to do my part of the, the, the Yulge and the service, I got up and I told everybody,

• 49:36Speaker 01

  I said, I said, I've struggled with this. I don't know what to say. So I said, I'm just going to simply read the letter I wrote to him. And I read the letter. Probably the shortest, you know, one of the shorter Yulge I did, but it was about two page letter. And I just wrote it to him. Talked about the things that you just talked about. You know, we didn't get to build that pole barn, but I'm going to figure out how. Yeah, we're going to make it happen. We'll make it happen. And so, uh, it was therapeutic. It was writing it. One is reminding me in our position in the world. It's all about us. And, and sometimes life will remind you it's not. And, but also being able to write that down, being able to, to just say it in words that I couldn't have said any other way, uh, lets you remember that one, that person meant the world to you, will still mean the world to you. But they're not just going to be there. And I think that's a big difference. So, you know, finding your

• 50:21Speaker 01

  ways to, to cope. And in our society, we sort of frown on that. You've got to have those moments of, of coping. And, um, in this fast, microwaved, get it now. I mean, think about how many times, I can't think of how many times in life I get mad at a drive through. Jesus, I said, I go in and get a cheeseburger and it's like, well, are they ever gonna, they're gonna kill the, you know, kill the cow? It's been all of six minutes and I'm upset. I can't get a burger, you know? We, we, we gotta have a reality check in some ways in our life and I think that's the way, uh, unfortunately military sort of builds that in in a different way.

• 50:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it, when you mentioned that, you know, you didn't take that month, right?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  I didn't.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  You didn't take that downtime. What, when did that kind of surface the fact that you look back and you go, man, I needed a little bit of a breather there?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  About two or three years later, uh, it was, it was, and, um, and, and we were, again, going back to my bride, who Lisa, uh, is, I, I truly believe given and we're together for a dear purpose. Cause she's, she has such insight into me and I into her. Um, but we were talking and, um, we go back and sometimes you look and you're trying to transition to something. I said, well, I didn't spend enough time learning this, right? And going back on it, she said, well, you know, part of that is you just had to go do it.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  And I said, yeah. And, and, and sometimes it's, you, you start figuring out that you should have done it because of what you can't do now. And so there's some things that, you know, my, if, if, if I hadn't went into politics, which I think, you know, was part of this whole plan, but from a legal perspective, I didn't go get a mentor and a help, even though I was, you know, 40, you know, right, 30, 40 years old, I needed somebody to go help me with the basics. I just started off a practice and said, hey, I'll just do this on my own, you know, type A at me. Well, I needed to be at a firm to be taught. And

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  How, what did you do at your firm?

• 52:17Speaker 01

  I did everything. I was a walk-in. If you walk in, if you walk, I mean, buddy.

• 52:20Jocko Willink?

  Whatever you got.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  But I walked in, if you had business, you had a divorce, you had criminal, I mean, I did it all. I was called storefront law, baby, you know, uh, and, uh,

• 52:30Jocko Willink?

  How long did you do that for? How long did you run that practice for?

• 52:34Speaker 01

  About four, about four years.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  Did you enjoy it?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  I did, I did. It was, it was an extension of pastoring in a way. You'd be, how many times do you, the pastors get asked legal questions, you know, kind of thing? It's like, well, pastor, help me out. And I was able to, you know, uh, help people when they came in and, uh, I ended up, uh, probably lost this. I can't, I can't remember how it completely ended up, but this woman, uh, lady came in one day and wanted, she was looking toward getting a divorce and we started talking and I think my pastor mind kicked in before my legal mind. And I said, what is your problem? And, and what's the problem? And she described us, I said, have y'all just tried to talk about this? And she's, well, I don't want to talk to him. And I said, well, here's what you do. I gave her this whole checklist on this. How do you go back home? I never heard from her again. I think she may went on and never got a divorce. So, you know, there went my, you know, fee, but other than that, you know, there's a marriage status. And so I, I count that as a win.

• 53:23Jocko Willink?

  Is it weird when you're a lawyer, when someone comes to you and you know that they're bad? How do you handle that?

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Um, a couple of ways. Number one, you know, our, our system, no matter who you are, demands that we have you due process and that they, they get that hearing. And if we ever lose that in our society, no matter how bad they are, uh, then it could be lost for any of us. But the other one is, is very, and it's interesting you should ask this question because it's a very spiritual answer for me. And I heard it from someone. I don't claim to be original, but it was, it was actually said, um, they said, well, Doug, how can you represent somebody that you know did it? So to speak. And I had people who did stupid stuff and they did. Um, I said, well, I said, I look at it this way. Number one, I'm not condoning, you know, maybe what they did or did not. I said, but the law says this is what we're supposed to. But then I said, for anybody, and I've had a lot of, uh, people, when I left the church, you talk about leaving a pastorate and then going to law.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, what are you doing here? I mean, I was the complete apostate at that point. Uh, he was like, well, and, uh, actually had a pastor say, well, you're leaving the mission. You're, you're leaving the, the ministry. I said, do you not hear what you preach every week? You talk about going back to their workplace. That only for them, not you. I went back into the world. I had more chances for ministry and being a lawyer and in law school than people who walked through the doors of a church. Most of them there have it all together. These folks didn't. And, um, so when I say this, I, I meant it. I said, you know, from my faith perspective, it teaches me that, that, that Christ stood with me on my worst day. How can I not stand with somebody on their worst day?

• 54:54Speaker 01

  And um, doesn't mean I agree with them. Doesn't mean I think that they deserve the punishment they're gonna get, but somebody needs to be there and maybe by being there with them, it'll help them, you know, find a new perspective in life as they go forward.

• 55:08Jocko Willink?

  So four years of that, then you end up, so you end up um, in the US Congress, right? And now you said that's like the NFL. This is full contact.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  It's full contact politics. It is.

• 55:19Jocko Willink?

  What does that look like? I mean, are you reading articles about yourself in the paper going, oh, my gosh, I never did any of that. What are they talking about? What does it look like? What's full contact politics look like?

• 55:26Speaker 01

  That means that everything's on the board. That everything you say, everything you do uh, is under my control. You know, if frankly, if if uh, if the Congress is NFL, Senate and House is NFL and campaigns are NFL, what now what we're doing now in the cabinet is is is, you know, more uh,

• 55:43Jocko Willink?

  Olympics?

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Olympics kind of thing. Yeah, cuz it is. But i- it's just a whole different uh, it becomes, you know, your shirts and skins. It's it's pure raw power at the at the national level cuz Washington is the ultimate peak of, you know, national politics and it is. And you then interact with the executive branch, whoever the president may be. When I first got elected, it was President Obama. Um, and he had just won reelection. And so I go into DC in a in a turmoil uh, because that was the time of, if you remember the old sequestration and the super committee and the fiscal cliff and all this kind of crap. So I I come into it in that time. Um, so everything is just, yeah, you read yourself. What what amazes me is how many times I read stuff in the paper, I read stuff online and

• 56:27Speaker 01

  I'm saying, and they talk about a meeting that happened and I'm saying, I just was at that. Man, it didn't happen that way. But but people get enough and they just write about it. So it's it's very open in the sense of what you do and and how you do it and or what people think of you. Um, you know, that perception. Uh, people also, we've had an interesting breakdown. I remember when I was younger, you know, if you had politicians or you had members of judiciary, even military, you know, there were certain things that you just didn't go up and, you know, say, you know, I noticed the other night that the president went to someplace to eat and there were people actually yelling at him and, you know, calling him a dictator and all this other. And I was like, you know, whether that was true or not, years ago, nobody did that. There was a decorum.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  There's no decorum anymore as far as that goes. I mean, people think they can, I mean, I get stopped in grocery stores, I get stopped everywhere and they'll just come up and, you know, one, ask you to do something or tell you off or whatever. So it's very high visibility when it comes to that perspective. Everything gets scrutinized. And, you know, you have to remember that, you know, whatever you say, somebody's gonna say something, you know, they'll, they'll might be, and they'll use it as an advantage. I think somebody once said, you know, was being in politics and pastoring were similar. I said, well, yeah, I said, to an extent, I said, but except in politics, I can fight back. And in the past, you know, it's like you just sort of had, okay, you're our congregation, please

• 57:53Speaker 01

  come together. You know, now I just fight back. You know, if you're gonna lie, I'm gonna pop you on your lie. And so we've, we've developed this very confrontational culture in politics, not to the best. And I'll just be very brutally honest about that. I was able to do a lot of bipartisan things when I was in Congress. We changed stuff. I focused on the things that a lot of them didn't focus on. And I had a lot of Democrat support, but it was common sense kind of stuff. Now, when you get to the bigger stuff, it's, I say shirts and skins, and you're not, very few shall the two meet. And that's made it very difficult to do big things. I don't care either.

• 58:32Jocko Willink?

  Well, is it worse than you thought it was gonna be when you showed up? Or was it worse than you thought it was gonna be as far as the partisanship when you showed up in DC?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Um, after coming from six years in the Georgia legislature, which we thought we had partisanship, which we really didn't, I mean, when I look at it from the perspective now, I mean, most people don't realize, like, and I'll just use Georgia, and this is true for most states, I've talked to a lot of state reps as well. In Georgia, we had like, like, eight, 92 or 3% of all the bills passed with either Both parties voting for it, or only about five or six people voting against it. You know, just very overwhelming majority. We only had about four to five bills that were ever down to, you know, just splitting party lines or people splitting over. So there's a, you know, will it pass, will it not pass? That was just, you know, we just didn't have it. Go to DC. I mean, you vote on, well, we're going to recognize that tomorrow is sunshine come up day and you're going to have all the Democrats vote yes and all the, you know, Republicans

• 59:25Speaker 01

  may vote no. And so it's just, you just walk that sort of, this is our party position and we're going to take that position. That's much more evident in DC than others and it's gotten worse over time. Like I said, we were able to pass some stuff that we were able to do some things with, but it took time, a lot of behind the scenes stuff that, you know, that were really big things like intellectual property stuff, music modernization. I did, that was a bill that I did actually with, who's the current minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries. We changed how people, like songwriters and stuff get paid on Spotify and all these platforms where as the old system, they were able to make a living, new system, all the digital stuff, they were getting screwed. And so, you know, those are the kind of things that's not headlines, but they make a billions

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  of dollars difference in the lives of everyday, you know, people. We did that for other bills as well. But so when you get there, you just sort of have to understand where it is and what I've noticed even further.

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  How do you connect with Hakeem Jeffries to start that process?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  It was, he was on the committee with me, we both came in the same year. And so when you look at some issues, you always try to get, you know, somebody on the other side to be on a sponsor on a bill like that. And it was really interesting, you know, he would handle sort of his side of the house, I would handle sort of my side of the house and we got it through the Senate and we did some criminal justice reform work, we did some trade secret stuff and, you know, it was just big bills that made a big difference, but it was just stuff that you were able to find common ground that wasn't the hot button issues that everybody was going to talk about.

• 1:00:55Jocko Willink?

  And, and you have, obviously you have to have conversations with them, sit down, talk to them. And it's like you're treating each other like human beings.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Yes. I've jokingly described the Congress as the WBE.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  So what you do in the, in the cages or in the ring is?

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Well, you have your own.

• 1:01:14Jocko Willink?

  A bit of an act?

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, social media's made it worse.

• 1:01:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Oh, it's, it's completely worse. You know, it's five minute questioning. I, I, I'm, look, I'm just, I'm one of those open kind of guys. Why I talk, that's why at the VA, they, uh, and the people who don't like the change we made, they just sort of attack. But I just said, look, if we're wrong, I'm gonna tell you we're wrong. If we're right, I'm gonna tell you how we're right and I'm gonna fight you either way. You know, we're gonna do this. But yeah, I mean, I, I have it all the time where, you know, the, uh, the five minute questioning that we see all the time in Congress. Um, you know, I once asked because there's a number of people on that committee. And so one day, our, your staff kind of helps you get this because the, the one thing is right now, we expect members of Congress to be experts on everything. And a, a friend of mine, one time he was a member of Congress, he came in, he said, Doug, he says, here's what you're gonna learn.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  He said, your first week, you're gonna walk in, you're gonna look at that, the, the big room, you're gonna look at the speaker, you're gonna see the TV, you're gonna see all the capital and it's gonna be amazing. He said, you're gonna ask yourself, how did I get here? He said, in about a month, you're gonna walk in, he said, you're gonna look around at your, uh, colleagues and everybody and you're gonna say, oh my God, how did they get here?

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  And, uh, and that's just sort of where it, it comes out of. And, um, but yeah, there's this, this five minutes. So I asked my staff one day, they had asked some questions that I knew were gonna be asked earlier because it was just the, the headline. And I said, why do you want me to ask these questions? Because I made a habit of, I did my own and I would watch the hearings because I, you know, my legal background, where I was, you know. I said, I'll just take what they say and just ask those questions. They said, but sir, when we put it on YouTube, nobody knows that you, those questions had already been asked. And it's like, really? That's the answer you just gave me. But it's an honest answer for them and I don't blame the comms people for that. That's, that's what their job is, is to, to give the, their member the best quote visibility.

• 1:03:01Jocko Willink?

  And how big is your staff when you're a congressman?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Um, in the House, you have about, depends on how you wanna staff it out, but I'd say somewhere between 14 and 16.

• 1:03:09Jocko Willink?

  And who's paying them?

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Government, federal government. There's a budget for each office. It's called the MRA. So you get about a, I may be off on this, so, but I wanna say it was. Like a million six, something like that. But that takes your district for your whoever's in the state and also who's in DC. And you typically have seven, if you're not in leadership or in a committee, typically have about six to seven in your DC office that handles all things. Because remember, as I just said a few minutes ago, we expect them to be experts in everything. But there's absolutely no way. On any given day in your office, you'll have somebody talking about everything from AI to abortion to dogfighting to, I mean, I'm just making, you know, just to give you the, to add to seeding and agriculture to the,

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  you know, undergrowth in a forest. I mean, all of this, there's no way. So you have people who handle those committees that you either you sit on or the committees that you don't sit on to keep up with what's going on. And then back in the district, you have folks who take care of the local stuff and also the constituent services. But now that covers everything. So that covers your plane tickets back home. That covers everything that you get to make it happen. And that's what happens.

• 1:04:20Jocko Willink?

  So you were kind of, you were on high visibility during the, as a judiciary committee during the whole Trump. What was that like from the inside?

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Uh, chaos. It really was because what I noticed something and I, and I noticed from the moment the 18 election occurred. Now, 17 and 18, those first, first two years, it was building this sort of storm. And we knew that a lot of the Russia stuff was fake. We knew that it was, we couldn't put our hand on why it was, but because they were hiding stuff, which Tulsi and many others have now found cash and the rest. But so myself, others on the committee, of course, Devin Nunes, Trey Gowdy, many of those had worked on this. Well, 18 happens. And we knew that Chairman Goodlatte was going to retire and he wasn't coming back. I was not the most senior, senior person, but I had done a lot of work. And

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  so we made a lot of friends. I would have been part of leadership and, and the house. So we made our play for what would have been chairmanship. Well, we lost the race. So I've been ranking, what's called ranking member. So I was the chairman for the Republicans in essence. And I noticed the change right after the November election when the Democrats won again. And they went from

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Folks that I had worked with, now they didn't want to work. Um, I remember a bill that was, and this is, shows you an interesting, it was antisemitism bill that finally, I think the president actually tried to put into executive order in the first term. Um, we were simply aligning the antisemitism language with other agencies in the state and for an education from State Department and others. We'd worked on this like three congresses and everybody, you know, you go, well, that's a first amendment problem and it is, we'd worked through it all. By the time we got it done, it, it was going to be fine. It would have been a good bill. Um, me being ranking member gives me some power on our side to, to boost that. So I said, right after the first, I said, I'm not going to be able to work with, uh, Mr. Nadler, you know, Jerry Nadler on a lot of things. I said, but this was area, cause Jerry had looked at it, some of the other members in

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  his side had worked on it as well. I said, let's go ahead and push this through. I said, it's something I can work with. Uh, well, we got some language problems. Uh, don't want to, so here was a bill that we could have easily gotten passed in their side, cause they were pushing it before. All of a sudden it became, well, we're not going to do this. And it became a partisan issue, became, we're not going to put Trump, you know, we're not going to give Trump any victories. So, uh, it was chaos from the beginning. I mean, Matt Whitaker, who's become a dear friend now, he's a NATO ambassador, uh, was the interim attorney general at the time before Barr came in. And the first thing they wanted to do was get him in, uh, because they wanted to see if he was doing anything with the Mueller investigation. And so I've, that began my year, I actually ended up writing a book about it.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Uh, it was called Clock in the Calendar. And there was some of my speeches, if you go to YouTube, you can look up this time. And I started saying, this is all about the clock in the calendar. And what it was, is they were trying to do what my opinion was, and I believe they frankly, they in some ways succeeded, um, was to tear down the president for the next presidential race. And that's all it was. And so it was a clause, a race against the clock and race against the calendar. Uh, we thought we'd beat Mueller. Um, and, and because there was nothing there and when the report came out, it was, it was terrible. And I, we had set it up and when his hearing was there, I took the first questions of it. And by the time I was done with my five minutes, he actually sort of admitted to the point that he didn't know what his own report said. And then it was just downhill from there. Um, so we left July that year thinking, okay, we're behind this a little bit.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Little did we know, there was going to be somebody decide to leak. To Adam Schiff and others, the call between Zelensky and the president. I remember being back in Georgia. I was actually doing two weeks Air Force at the time. And I'm working between the two in the nights and all of a sudden we started hearing this rumors, rumblings about this issue. We get back in the fall of 2019 and that was all it was. Was the impeach in Zelensky and the stuff that we had already seen. And so it was, it was chaos in the sense of it just divulged into where nothing else happened. This is what most people don't understand. They see this and then the partisans are drawn to it and rightfully so. This was interesting. We were fighting from the fact that this was not,

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  you know, an issue. We shouldn't be doing it. But at the same point in time, we wasn't passing spending bills. We wasn't passing anything else to help the American people. We were focused on the drama. And that's where it comes. Nowadays, because of the way it's set up, Congress has to deal with the issues of that it's not necessarily what you do. I mean, there's a lot of members of Congress that are very well known. You know, I don't speak ill of them in the sense of they're, but they're very well known, but they've not accomplished anything legislatively. And they're named, and they're actually called legislators, but they've never done anything legislatively. What they have done is talk about issues, frame issues, talk about the other side, whatever.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  And I think that's, you know, it has its place. I mean, it's like football, you know, it's like trash talking and, you know, it, you see it in UFC, you see it everywhere. It's there, but it shouldn't be the main, the, the, the actual contest is what we need to be doing. And, and so I now have a unique perspective of having congressional legislative and administrative side. And so it's, it's really interesting to look back on it and see that what may, may make good media doesn't necessarily help make good policy as we go forward.

• 1:09:46Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you get to know President Trump at that time?

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  I did. That's when I got to know him.

• 1:09:51Jocko Willink?

  What was it, what was it like being introduced to him? How did that relationship?

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  It was interesting. He, I didn't really know him before he ran and there was a few of us, a few of the members did, but I guess, well, I got to know him a little bit in 17 and 18 when I was in the leadership, but then having to walk into that role, which put us into contact a great deal.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  I saw somebody who really wanted to do something good, but was very frustrated with it, the lies, a lot of what was going on, the constant attacks, the constant, you know, nothing was gonna get done. And even internally, you know, it was just dealing with the government that he came in thinking, hey, like everybody else, let's make deals, let's work with this. And I think by the time 18 rolled around, he realized that it was just, they want to get me. And that's all they want to do. And he was in fighting mode. And believe me, there's been no better president in the last, I don't think there's another president in the last 100 years that could have withstood what he withstood. And, and did what he did

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  to fight back and to do the best he could with, with what it, and then to see the things that he was doing in those last part of the years. I mean, the, the Abraham Accords, the, the stuff that we had going on, defeating ISIS, defeating these kind of things, they don't get any discussion. And this is not just a partisan speaking. I mean, I was, you know, I did history in college. Look at what happened here. Why aren't we, you know, you may not like the individual, but you gotta look at least these accomplishments, you know, he took on historical black colleges and universities, made permanent funding for, for them. We took on, you know, criminal justice reform, which actually helped, you know, large positions of, of our population, which I had a great deal of interest in, in getting them back into society and getting them back as being, you know, husbands and fathers

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  and family members and taxpayers and getting them back to a life instead of us just incarcerating them forever, and making them better criminals when they got out. I mean, he did all of this, but yet, the only thing people want to talk about is we impeached him. All they wanted to do was impeach him. They knew they had no, no hope of it going through, but they had to do it. Because that's what they're, so with him, you could just, you sensed his frustration. I kept up the relationship, of course, after.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  The I got out there in that years that that year as well.

• 1:12:06Jocko Willink?

  And what made you decide to get out?

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  I ran for senate, a crazy thing, but it was that's a whole another three hour podcast. But I ran in Georgia and it was one in which we thought we could have won. It got our governor had played in that and appointed someone else. And I ran ahead and ran because I thought we were going, we've had a chance that we could have lost. Kelly Loeffler, who's now in the administration, we're friends, but I just thought I could win and she couldn't at the time. And that's why I ran. We ended up losing both seats in Georgia in 2020. So that's how you have two, a very conservative state has two Democrat senators. And over time, but so we kept in touch and it was just over time. He would call and I'd call him and we would just communicate and then it's the.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do when you're out of a job?

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Um, I started to practice law for a little bit and that didn't work out real well. Going back to that, remember that scab we talked about? It's been so long I've been out of it. I hadn't practiced that long anyway. And then I got back into it and enjoyed it. I went with a firm this time that was really good, a guy that I knew. We didn't, I never worked directly, but he allowed me to be a part of his office and just, you know, rent office space and stuff like that.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  So I took on some small cases, but realized pretty quickly that I was doing some other things with, you know, staying involved in government politics. That it wasn't there and I didn't have the resources, the money to hire anybody to help me, so to speak. So I just sort of after about, after about eight, nine months, I just said, no, I'll go do the other stuff that I was working with some. Consulting and doing that. So that's how I got out.

• 1:13:36Jocko Willink?

  And then what were you doing for the last campaign for Trump? Were you doing anything inside the campaign?

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  I was, I'd go to rallies, I'd go do interviews, I'd do a lot of media. I did a lot of media of the last four years. And so did social media, but also did Fox, did Newsmax, did, you know, CNN, did, you know, others. I had raised a very large profile from 2019 and 2020 from being on, you know, everybody's TV. I mean, there's probably, you know. Some of those Mueller hearings, I mean, we had twenty, twenty-five million people watching at any one time. I had clips of, of opening statements or questioning that were getting, you know, fifteen million views on YouTube. I mean, it was, you know, because they were just being over and overplayed. So it raised a profile up. So I just continued some of that and to the media. So I did a lot of interviews, a lot of, uh, uh, commentating.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  I did a, a short time did a podcast as well, did some, just, you know, keeping out there. And so when the campaign really kicked in, uh, when he said he's gonna run again, and then it, uh, through the end of twenty-three and then twenty-four. So he would do rallies, I'd go speak at the rallies, um, you know, and, and keep up that way. And, uh, we'd always just conversate.

• 1:14:43Jocko Willink?

  And what did you think? Did you, did it feel like inside the campaign, like, like Trump was gonna win? Or was it a question?

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  And, no, I always thought he, I thought he's always gonna be the nominee. That was never a doubt. I, I knew some of the others. Uh, I had served with Ron DeSantis. I had served, uh, you know, with others. And I said, no, he's gonna, he's gonna win this. The people, President Trump is a force of nature unto himself. Okay. And then there's somebody gonna just hate him. There's gonna be somebody gonna love him. Uh, you rarely find anybody in the middle, uh, with that. And you could tell after twenty sixteen, I mean, I was going to places in Georgia, I mean, back country Georgia, which I love dearly, and there's twenty sixteen signs still up. I mean, it goes back, and they never came down. And these were not in front of houses. These were, you know, it always amazed me that this billionaire, literally from New York, who related to common folks

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  and, and he still does it to this day. Amazingly, it is just is. And so you could see it. And, and some had never went out of the campaign mode. They just, it was, so when twenty-three, twenty-four, you know, last year hit, um, you, you just knew he was gonna win. He just, uh, the, the numbers were there. They weren't gonna take it. The only question became was is how was the campaign gonna go? Um, you know, and the, all the lawsuits and the, the warfare, lawfare that it was going on. Um, but he, amazingly, again, he just, he went through it. And it just showed a, a tenacity that was pretty amazing. And then when the real truth about Biden started to come out, and then that debate, which was a complete disaster. Um, you know, I began

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Feel good. I thought I was a little concerned right after that because then the Democrats got all fired up because they said, well, let's put in Harrison. But you could just see the president being just the president and he continued on. So I felt good about it. And every time I'd see him, we'd always sort of have the conversation. He said, well, I said, he said, well, I'm just gonna, he said, you gotta come back. And I said, Mr. President, let's just get you elected. I said, we'll talk about it later. And this way it ended up. And so.

• 1:16:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for a while, it seemed like every day I would, you know, open up the news and every day, every day. There was the, the, the news story that was going to end Donald Trump's presidential campaign. And, and then every day that happened. And then with each day, you know, two days later, the story that was two days old was now disproven. And now you had some other story that'd pop up. And it seemed like if that was just a terrible tactic for the media and the Democrats to take, we're going to throw something at this guy every single day. But instead of it piling up, it all just kind of faded away because people just didn't trust them anymore of what the media was saying.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it goes back to what I, you ever had that person, you remember back in, uh, maybe in the military, maybe in high school, that they were just full of crap.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  I don't know any way to put it. You know, you loved them. They're great. It was always great to hang around, but, but, you know, little whatever you call him. You know, they come up and he's, nothing came out of their mouth was like, yeah, right. Okay. Yeah. I just saw a dinosaur Rex out back of the gym. No, you didn't shut up. Let's go home. I mean, the sad part was it could have been a dinosaur Rex, but you wouldn't have believed it to start with. And I think that's where it came with the media and they thought what would hurt him was stuff that they cared about. It was because this, you know, there's been Trump derangement syndrome, whatever you want to call it. There is just this fascination. But there's also a different side here. The press would hate to not have him. They eat it up. Think about, I've been with him now in the cabinet for, you know, we're eight months now.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  What other president has sat at his desk for three hours? And answered just every questions? And just, and yet, it was amazing is, well, you know, Joe Biden's not had a press conference in 300 days, but that's okay. He's running the country, you know? We never have a sit down with President Obama, you know? And, you know, they just sort of let it go. Trump gives them every answer they want, and they still grope about it. It's like, oh, well, he said this was wrong and this was wrong and he, and he put a, you know, they're, they're, they're about the only people I say that they, he used the Oxford comma on his speaking, not writing. It's like, my God, you know? They just hate it, but he answers every question and people on both sides, it gets to be, okay, it's just the same old, same old as we go.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  So I think, I think that's what actually brought it to light and people were, you know, frankly, were tired. But now I see him in this new administration, you know, asking between the two. He's focused, he's relaxed. Um, I got to know him when he was under constant siege and all of, a lot of us were in that timeframe. It was just, everything was going on. Um, and he reacted in the way you would expect him to react. He, he fought back and he did well. Uh, now

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  he said, I'm here. I get another chance. He put together a cabinet, um, that all of us, you know, and I know watch these people who watch this. That's the least experienced, the worst cabinet in the world. Fine, whatever, get a life, um, you know, but we're there. And the interesting thing is we all work together. We've either worked together or known each other for a while. We're not, we didn't get plucked from commerce or treasury or vets or other, from these sort of silos of what you used to be built up to how you went to these administrations. We actually know each other. Tulsi and I served together for years. I mean, she's a dear friend. Uh, I know Cash from, uh, from working on the Hill and these issues. I've known Pete from Fox. I knew, uh, Brooke Rollins from working with her. I knew Linda from working with her.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  I knew Pam Bondi, uh, Lee Zeldin, we served together. We were on the committee, committee together. We pick up the phone and call each other. We work together and we're only there for one reason. Make it better. And I think that's what's given the president the ability to go set an agenda, let this agenda go. It's going and we're coming that we're seeing the results of the big beautiful bill. We're seeing the is slow and coming, but you've taken an economy that had been so government centric for so long that now we're saying, let the, let the, the real enterprise start going here. And we're seeing it work. Veterans are being experienced because they can start jobs. They can get stuff. People are seeing, you know, inflation going down. They're seeing gas prices down. They're seeing the eggs down. If that's the big thing for the, uh, the moment.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  So that's when you see this stuff happening. So I think he is very focused and he's willing to, as best I can put it, I like to say this, he's Trump being Trump.

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  And it's pretty cool to see because the rest of the world, think about this, the rest of the world, they don't know how to deal with him.

• 1:21:05Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  They didn't know how to deal with it the first time.

• 1:21:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  They really don't know how to deal with him now. And, you know, Putin's about, you know, in, in these others where he's really working it hard. I mean, I mean, he's trying, but I think they're going to push a button that, you know, and it's, it's just gets him to the point of say, look, I'm gonna put us first. And he said, I'm gonna make sure our folks are protected. And he said, I'm gonna make sure the world understands who we are.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  So where, once Trump wins, do you already know, you know, do you have a foresight of that you're gonna, that you're gonna be put in this position?

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  No, a little bit. I mean, we had talked and like I said, he had said, well, you know, I want you to come out here because there was always a discussion of me running for another office. And I said, well, sir, I want to help you any way I can. He said, I just want, you know, you'd come to me. I said, sir, fine. You win, we'll talk about it. Well, he won and about a week later, um, we'd had some conversation with some of the staff as they were getting the transition done. And, um, that's how it came about. And he called and we were looking at several things. And I, I just looked at it from my experience being in 24 year, you know, in the air force, navy, a lawyer, been in congress. I'm, I'm the first VA secretary that's been a member, had been a former member of congress since it became a cabinet position. That's, to me is vital because I understand what happens on Capitol Hill.

• 1:22:15Jocko Willink?

  You understand how the sausage gets made.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Oh, you better believe it. And I know how that we're working. And, um, you know, and I've had some contentious hearings in my confirmation hearing and stuff, but I'll go back and forth with them. And I, and I've made it very clear, you're not gonna lie about the VA. I mean, you have your own political position. That's fine, but you're not gonna use it for, for propaganda pieces. And so many times the VA has been used by both sides. And I'll say that for political purposes, because who doesn't want to be elected office and say, I'm not for the veteran? That's a quick way to get beat. So, but they want to stay there for the veteran, but yet they try to use the VA as their whipping post to do that. And I've just taken a different attitude and said after this, so I looked at it, I said, I've got this experience, president agreed, we put it in, and we've been putting, you know, that veteran centric, veteran first

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  perspective to the largest agency in government.

• 1:23:04Jocko Willink?

  So now you're in the VA and there's the background of the VA, the VA has been around forever. What is it? Is it the, is it the second largest?

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  We are, we're the largest civilian, purely civilian department.

• 1:23:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  We're the same size after, by the end of September, we're going to be, we're still larger than the active duty army.

• 1:23:22Jocko Willink?

  And I kind of opened up today talking about some, trying to paint the obvious, clear picture of why the VA is so important. And obviously, almost all my friends are veterans. We got in the VA, it's disability compensation and pension payments. It's comprehensive health care, which includes mental health, long-term care, nursing homes, telehealth services, counseling, mental health services, crisis support, prescription drugs, rehabilitation services, education benefits, home loan guarantee, VA, VA loans, outstanding, life insurance programs, burial and memorial benefits, support for family caregivers. I mean, it is just

• 1:24:06Jocko Willink?

  a massive, massive department. You come on board, what does it look like when you get there? When you're, when you, when you first walk in the door and you, you start, you start looking at what's happening there, what are your immediate thoughts?

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Oh my God. That's really that first thought, really. Because I was starting to learn a little bit because you have to go through confirmation. So I had to start learning about the department, even though 60% of my caseload as a congressman was dealing with VA issues. And I had dealt with it with Johnny Isen when he was chairman of the VA committee in the Senate, and he was a dear friend of my senator from the home state. But you begin to look at the scope and scale of this, of the hospitals. We have 170 VAMCs, 170 hospitals. We have 1,200 clinics. We're, we're the biggest healthcare system. And by the world from especially the US. And so we deal with that. That's a, you know, a massive organization, three hundred and seventy, three hundred and eighty thousand people or more. Then you got our benefit side, which deal with everything that you just touched on from

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  actual disabilities and compensation to VBA also handles your home loans, your student loans, you know, the GI bills, those kind of things. And then you have our cemeteries, which is our smallest of our group, but to me is one of our most precious that we have because of what we get to do. In fact, I was just here yesterday, spent some time at Rosenkrantz and went by Mike and laid a coin yesterday. Thank you for doing that. At his site. And but I looked at it, what I began to see, and I started having these meetings and get the picture and if you ever have a chance, I'd love for you to come see my office. I'll show you where this was and we've sat there and these cars come in and say, well, sir, here's, here's what we're doing and they would come with you with questions and I wasn't

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  raised in the VA. It was not a, you know, so the sense because I see it from the outside. So I just ask questions as an outsider would ask questions. And so my favorite line and it still is to this day and I talk about all the time, I just ask why. They'll say, well, here's what we're doing. I'll say, why?

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  Well, and they try to move on. I said, no, no, no. Explain to me why we do it this way. I said, it may be perfect. I said, but just explain to me why. Couldn't explain. A lot of times they just couldn't explain. Or then I would get this. Well, it's statute. You know, we just have to follow the statute. Well, I was in Congress for eight years. You know where those statutes come from. I'm a lawyer. So I said, well, show me the statute. And I said, I'd love to see the statute. And I said, if we need to change it, I'll go to Congress and we'll work on changing it. I said, but show me the statute.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Well, it is policy and procedure. It's a regulation. I said, now we're getting somewhere. I said, statute, I have to work with Congress. That's law. So we're going to follow the law. I said, but policy and procedures, regulations, that's me. That's us. That's called a pen. I said, if we're doing something we don't need to be doing, and we're doing it in a way that's counterintuitive to our mission, I said, we're gonna change it. And so that's what we've done so far. What what happened was, and if you think of it as silos, is really, truly siloed to siloed. We see this in the military, unfortunately, it's where we get in trouble, uh, when we have siloed missions. Um, our health mission became very solid because it's the largest. Okay, so they just developed their own procedures, they developed their own protocol. Every hospital thought they were a startup. I've had to fight this from day one.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  I remind them, if you have VA on the side of your building, you're not a startup, you're not by yourself, and you will not act like you are. Uh, we, why are we wasting the possibilities of 170 hospitals being standardized to actually do stuff the right way? Uh, Jocko, I was amazed. I had a, a young man tell me one day, uh, he was, uh, amputee, told me he was getting a treatment in one facility and moved to another facility across country. And this facility he moved to told him, the VA, we don't do that. He said, I just came from facilities where I, this is where I, this was done. Oh, well, I don't, I don't care, we don't do that. It's like, this is what we faced. Something's wrong. So, so yeah, something's wrong in this picture. You know, somebody pull the, the rip cord, because there's a problem here. This is what we saw.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  So I saw, uh, I saw a lot of people doing, want to do good work. But the problem was, it was, we've always done it that way before. I think that's the old Baptist preacher in me now that didn't tolerate that at all. Uh, well, we've always done it that way before, so what? We're not, we added in 10 years, so 25, 15 to 25, we added over a hundred billion or more in budget and over a hundred thousand people. And you know what's happened to our quote, uh, metrics? Service. All went the wrong way. All went the wrong way. By the time I got in, and we had 260,000 in backlog disability claims when I took office on February 5th, that means there are over 125 days. And some were a lot longer than that. And I said, we're gonna, we put a tag team on it, we put overtime in it, we put other

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  people, we're now under 150, did that in less than four months. I mean, it's just, it's just a matter of what gets measured gets done.

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  Um, and we looked at, I just got a report on our VHA system in which we started putting stuff like best medical interests. So if a, a member comes in and they say, you know, look, I would rather go to my cardiologist, uh, in, it's close to my home or it's just in town. I love you at the VA. I'm going to get other care here, but I want to go there. Then the doctor can simply say, yep, we're going to send you over there and it not have to go through another doctor or anything else. So look, and, and I'm going to say this because here's the thing, I'll guarantee you what's going to happen is, uh, when this comes out, you're going to see in the comments section, oh, secretary's full of crap. I went and it was awful. I couldn't get this.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  Bear with me. Some of them are not going to like this because I don't put the VA, the organization is not, we're a service organization designed to help veterans. We're not an organization designed to help ourselves. And you may have had a bad experience and I understand that. You may have still had a bad experience. Well, comment on there because here's an interesting thing. I, when I, you talked about early me coming into this position, I had a very high profile. I'm one of the highest profile, social media and others that's ever served in this position. Uh, I could probably give the names of others and they were great people, but nobody would know them anywhere. So what we've had, we found out early on is when I posted on social media, Twitter, Instagram, these others, we were having massive response because I had a huge, you know, large following. So we have now put internally a group that actually reads those comments.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  And we have actually started doing, uh, constituent and reaching out to these folks. We don't, we don't encourage that because I mean, we may miss one, but, but we're actually doing this to say, look, we want to get better. Okay. You may say that we're not moving fast enough. You may say it's easy. Well, we're 450,000 people. 170 hospitals. I'm trying to get across to every one of them as we do this. Give us some time. If you've got the feedback, let us know. We're willing to take feedback and I'm willing to make changes. Um, but as we go through this, I'm also having to take an organization that has been very adept at doing it the way they wanted to do it. So they were had no problem in having not having extended hours.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  I've implemented a program in which we've added almost a million to a million 200,000 extra hours of service in just the last few months at our C box. Cause we're actually keeping some people late, we're opening on weekends. That gives, you know, our younger veterans a chance to get there. We're, we're listening. We have the best medical interest stuff. Get you out to where you need to go. We're looking at, uh, holding our, uh, doctors accountable, uh, in the community to get the stuff back so that we can make sure we're not, uh, the, the simple things that take so much time, we're saying, let's take those out. I'm getting to the point now, and some are not as happy about this because they're invested in how they do it, but others are getting on to it is if I've of the opinion that no veteran who's earned a benefit should have to have anybody to help them get that benefit.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  In other words, this paperwork should be simple enough. The process should be simple enough that they can get the benefit that they've earned. Instead of having to go to somebody else and say, I don't understand this, I'm not. We actually have a form, it's still in our form, and I'm trying to get this out, but it's still in there on disability claims that actually ask for the person's military history, where they had served and everything else. I looked at this, I said, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. All I need is your name, your, your social security number, your DD 214 or, or even just that, I can pull your entire record. I know everywhere you've been. Why am I making them fill that out? Because we just thought it would be good to ask. Well, I don't do that anymore. So it's, so like I said, for those out there who, you know, you know, look, you know, we've, we're a healthcare system. And I, this is one thing I want to emphasize to all your listeners.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  Congress put metrics out there and we hear this all the time. You hear about wait times, you hear about, uh, these others. We're the only healthcare system in the world that measures wait times. And it's because Congress, and I was there when we did this mission act and everything else. It was because we were having issues in Phoenix and others where the people were getting, you know, wasn't getting scheduled appointments. So we said, how do we get a handle on this and make sure, okay, so if you don't have a, an appointment within 10 days, you can go to the community. Well, I'm sort of redoing that all together. So we're not really worried about it. But no other healthcare system here in California or anywhere else deals in that. It's just something we can look at, but it also gives a false reality of what, uh, the VA can look like. You could have a great wait times and terrible quality.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  So I'm trying to get us back to a standard of quality being the metric, not the wait times. We're going to continue to get you in as quickly as possible. But also I need you to know, and again, I'm, you'll hear from it, because I've already seen this enough. They canceled my appointment last week. Well, guess what? I'm in private healthcare and my doctor canceled my appointment last week. Because they get sick, they can't come in, they got overbooked, they had to go on a trip. We're, we're a healthcare organization. And now I've had the media getting on me and say, well, you have people leaving and you have doctors that, you know, you need more doctors in certain areas. I said, yeah, have you done a story lately on the hospitals in town that they have doctor shortages as well? Well, they don't want to talk about that because it's easy to get on the veteran because it's a heart string issue.

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  I have the veteran at my heart center getting up. I am one. I've, I've been there. There's nothing I'm going to do. It's not going to be focused on getting them what they need. But also, I'm also tired of the society that looks at veterans as victims. We're not victims. You may, I may have people, and I've met so many, they may have lost legs, arms, everything. They're not victims, they're just now in a power to do it in a different way and we're going to help them do whatever we can. So that's my philosophy and it ruffles some edges. And, uh, you know, people go, oh, you've killed in morale. No, we're, we're just getting back to doing what we're supposed to be doing. And I love every one of my VA employees. I want them to be the best they can be. But we're also going to have standardization. We're going to do it the same way.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  You know, the calisthenics run the same way everywhere. And, and that's, but, but when you've not had that, it's, it's been a situation in which we've had a system that was good. And I'm not, I don't want to, I never will detriment. But every system can get better. And every organization that's not looked at itself. I got you one, because I know you do organizational stuff and everything. Did you realize that the first week that I got there, I asked for how many employees we had? It took a week and a half for them to tell me.

• 1:34:59Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  And right now, a big headline came out about a week ago because we're doing organizational charts and Manning documents. Okay, just think about what I just said. Manning documents, I've been eight months in, we're doing this, it got leaked to the press and said, "Oh, there's organizational change in Manning documents." Yeah, I'm doing a Manning document. Tell me any company in the world that doesn't have a Manning document. I come from the military side. I was at Africa headquarters for Chaplains. I could tell you where every billet I had, I could tell you who was assigned to that billet, who was in that billet, who was coming out of that billet, and I go to the largest healthcare system in the world and you can't tell me a Manning document or a chart. That's how, that's how bad it was. So you ask, that's where it was. We're moving forward.

• 1:35:40Jocko Willink?

  Well, change is coming and, uh, change has come today for us because I know you got called back to DC and we're short on time. We gotta get you on a flight out of here. So, uh, any other closing thoughts before we get you out of here?

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  No, John, I appreciate what you're doing and just tell me, everybody, one of the things is, and I emphasize this always, especially those, if you're listening to this and maybe you're out there somewhere and you think you're alone, you're not. Okay, don't ever think you're alone. And I'm calling all veterans and I know this, the folks who listen to this podcast. It's amazing how we had a camaraderie when we were in and we seem to forget it when we leave. Those battle buddies, wingmen, those folks, if somebody's on your heart and you haven't talked to them in a while, uh, text them, call them, do something, because right now we're losing 17 or more today to death by suicide. Many of them, as you started off this whole thing, we're trying our best in the VA to get them as help, many of them as help, but modern are never gonna ask for help. They're just looking for a buddy. They're just looking for, for someone to listen. And all I ask is that we all work at this together going forward.

• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do everything I can for the VA and the VA is gonna work for veterans and we're gonna do it across our board. Um, and nobody ever question, you know, if they wanna question my belief, fine, but I just say prove it because I'm working at this every day. But we've all got the part to play here. And the VA is no longer gonna be the, "Oh, well, we're gonna make it better and we're gonna do it." No, the VA is gonna be the best we can be. Our standards are gonna be high and I'm not gonna let anybody, if we're doing it wrong, I'm gonna fix it. If we're doing it right, I'm gonna fight you with it because I'm not gonna let anybody take, uh, because when I see so many of this happening and they start lying about what's going on, I tell them, "Don't think about the situation that you're lying about. Think about the person who hears this, it's a veteran out there." It's 60% of our veterans who have death by suicide have never had contact with the VA.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  And I said, "If you keep telling them that the VA is bad, or you keep telling them this and you don't go follow up with the right answer, then they're gonna stay away." And if you keep doing that and you're lying to them and scaring them, then you're part of the problem. And so for me, it's just about putting it all together and saying, you know, let's take this time, let's make this work because we have men and women who want to serve this country, who raised that right hand. They've earned the benefit. Our country said, we're gonna do it. Well, by God, we're gonna do it.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Indeed. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for your service in the Navy. Thanks for your service in the Air Force and thanks for what you're doing today to take care of our veterans. Much appreciated. Thank you.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Chuck, I appreciate it.

• 1:38:01Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Secretary Collins has left the building. And as I mentioned during the podcast, he got called back to Washington DC, surprisingly, or whatever's a surprise to them, they got called back to DC with some project or tasking or something like that. So unfortunately, couldn't stick around very long. But, uh, great to have him on. And just, just FYI, he mentioned his, uh, social media and that they're actually doing stuff for their social media. So there's a couple of things, um, for, to find Secretary

• 1:38:35Jocko Willink?

  Collins himself, he's on Twitter X at Sec Vet Affairs and at Rep Doug Collins. So that's, that's where he is. So he kind of has two. And then same thing with Instagram, he's at Sec Vet Affairs and then at Doug Collins GA. I think I'd focus on the at Sec Vet Affairs since that's his current job. And then for the VA itself, for the VA itself, on the interwebs, va.gov. And then on Instagram, Twitter X and YouTube, it's at depart, DEPT,

• 1:39:15Jocko Willink?

  Vet Affairs. And then on Facebook, it's U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. So there you go. Uh, you know, and as I mentioned, they're paying attention to that social media. So if you need to pass some word and whatnot, then that seems like a place to do it. And, you know, as he was leaving, you know, we'll try and get a chance to get him back on here and discuss some more of this stuff in a little bit more detail. I had a bunch of things, a bunch of topics we were going to cover, but we just, we just ran out of time. So it's the way it goes sometimes. But one thing we do know is this, your mind and your body are attached. And that was one of the things that, you know, we really didn't get to it, but it's one of the things that I wanted to talk about. Just your mind and your body are attached. And if you're

• 1:40:00Jocko Willink?

  strong in your body, there's a decent chance you'll be strong in your mind. And so doing things like training is very helpful. When you train, guess what you're gonna need Echo Charles?

• 1:40:13Speaker 02

  Fuel.

• 1:40:14Jocko Willink?

  Yes. I thought you were gonna say rest, which you are. You do need rest. You're gonna need fuel. So check out jockofuel.com. Get yourself some Hydrate. I'm having a Hydrate right now because I ran this morning a little further than I wanted to. You know, we had various activities that were happening on the run. We had dogs. The beach was looking tempting, the whole nine yards. So ended up probably losing quite a bit of sweat and then just rolled right in here with a Hydrate. So Hydrate, energy drinks, the whole nine yards, protein, you need protein. Check out jockofuel.com or check out wherever you shop. We're getting there. You can probably, like, it's up the street from my house at my local Jensen's

• 1:40:56Jocko Willink?

  supermarket. You can get Jocko Fuel right now. So check it out. The best, cleanest stuff for your system, your fuel, jockofuel.com. Check it out. And then Origin USA, you know, we're doing these efforts in America to bring manufacturing back right now. Well, we've been doing that for a while at Origin USA. We recognize that manufacturing is a key component of a nation. And we were selling that out overseas. So at Origin, we are bringing it back. Check out originusa.com. You need t-shirt, hoodie, whatever you need. Training shorts, I got the Nylock training shorts. They're, they're, they're good to go for the, for jujitsu

• 1:41:39Jocko Willink?

  training. Good to go. So check it out. Originusa.com. Get yourself some boots, jeans, whatever you need.

• 1:41:45Speaker 02

  It's true. Also, jocko store.com is where you can get your shirts representing on the planet. Discipline equals freedom. Good. These notions that, that we need and that we have on the path, you can represent those. Anyway, yeah, some good stuff on there, some socks on there too even. It's very good. Also, we have a lot of new stuff coming. Get after it, stand by to get some of all these shirts that we know.

• 1:42:10Jocko Willink?

  What, like 2.0 scenarios?

• 1:42:12Speaker 02

  Like 2.0 scenarios, exactly right. Cause we've had these on the, on the store for a long time, but it's a, might be time for an update. Anyway, if you're interested in any new stuff, you can put your email in the little email list there. I won't spam. I don't spam. I'm against spam, spamming. So yeah, but we'll keep you updated as far as new stuff and when it comes out. Cause a lot of times, you know, things some, every once in a while they'll get sold out and you gotta wait for the new thing and it can be a thing. But if you get in, you get the heads up through the email, boom, you can get, get yours when they come out. It's the best time to do it. Also Shirt Locker, uh, subscription scenario, new design every month. People seem to like it. Design's a little bit outside the box sometimes, probably.

• 1:42:54Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes they're smack bagged in the middle.

• 1:42:56Speaker 02

  In the middle of the box, sometimes. Exactly right. It's kind of the.

• 1:42:59Jocko Willink?

  I noticed that my daughters like the Shirt Locker shirts. They don't like the standard issue stuff. They like the Shirt Locker shirts.

• 1:43:05Speaker 02

  Sometimes they can be fun. You know, the designs are fun. You know, that's why I'm with you and, or I'm with them on these notions. The last one, or sorry, the next one, the current one right now is Viking runes, I think, themed.

• 1:43:22Jocko Willink?

  How come?

• 1:43:23Speaker 02

  Discipline equals freedom.

• 1:43:25Jocko Willink?

  Did you send me one?

• 1:43:26Speaker 02

  No, not yet. But if you wanna see, you know, you wanna see kinda, kinda like a hint of what they look like, go on jocklestore.com, click on the Shirt Locker. You can see what it's all about. Anyway, it's all good. It's all on jocklestore.com.

• 1:43:36Jocko Willink?

  All right. Also, Dave Burke, Dave Burke has a book coming out. It's called The Need to Lead. It comes out in October. Order it now to get the, I wrote the foreword to it. Order it now to get the first edition. You want that first edition. Also Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. That's what we do. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com if you need help inside your organization. Also check out extremeownership.com. It's our online training academy.

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Can learn how to lead in the comfort of your own home.

• 1:44:06Jocko Willink?

  It's important. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. And actually, there's a little gap in service sometimes with the VA. And there's some things that they don't cover. Mama Lee comes into play with Americas Mighty Warriors.org. She can help cover that gap. So, check that out if you want to, if you want to donate or get involved. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org and of course Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Once again, to connect with the secretary, Twitter X, it's @SecVetAffairs

• 1:44:48Jocko Willink?

  and @RepDougCollins on Instagram, it's @SecVetAffairs and @DougCollinsGA. And for the VA, on the interwebs, it's VA.com. And then Instagram, Twitter X, YouTube, @DepartmentDEPTVetAffairs. For us, you can check out Jaco.com. And then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink and Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm there.

• 1:45:17Jocko Willink?

  And you don't want to spend all your time in that algorithm. And you also don't want your, your main place for action to be posting stuff. You, that's not what you want to do in your life. So just be careful, the algorithm, it's there. Once again, thanks to the Honorable Doug Collins for joining us. Thanks for your service in the military. Thanks for your service in the government. Thank you for your service as the secretary, taking care of our veterans. We appreciate what you are doing. And thanks to all of our military around the world, active duty and our veterans. Of course, thank you for your service, for what you are doing right now and for what you have done.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service protecting us here at home. And for everyone else out there, whether you're a veteran or not.

• 1:46:13Jocko Willink?

  You are possibly likely in one of these three situations. Maybe you're doing okay and you got things handled. And that's great. Stay on the path. Maybe things are going well for you. And if things are going well for you, then maybe you have the capacity to help others. And if that's the position you're in, where you've got a little capacity, well, then you know what to do. Help some other people out. And then you also might be a person who's in a spot right now where you need some help. And that's normal. And everyone's been there. And ask for help. And hang in there. And things will get better.

• 1:46:56Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it works. So hang tough. And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.